High Steel: The Daring Men Who Built the World's Greatest Skyline

Must read for anyone in the Ironworker family!! You will learn a lot about what it means to live the life plus you'll learn the roots and sufferings of the early sky-walkers.

A good book for reading about the history and stories of the Local 40 Structural Ironworkers of NYC.

Rasenberger brings awareness to the little known and aknowledged trade of Iron Workers. This is an excellent book for those who are in the trade and those who want a close to real life view of who Ironworkers are and what their life was and is like. The book gives a pretty accurate history of the trade going back to the early Bridgeman to the current International Associates of Bridge, Structrual, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers. Being a 3rd generation Iron Worker I found this a very pleasureable read and recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about what it is that we do as we build America on Beam at a time.

This story of iron workers is both extremely interesting and a really fun read. It provides beautifully crafted vignettes drawn both from the history of iron workers and from contemporary tales of today's iron workers at work in New York. A strong narrative thread connects these stories as the reader learns about the lives of a small group of iron workers today at the same time as Rasenberger deftly introduces the history of this trade and its daring tradesmen that brings this story to life and sets it in context. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in iron workers, in the history of our tall buildings and impressive bridges and to anyone looking for an accessible and fun read about real workers engaged in daring and dangerous work. It's beautifully written, a sympathetic portrait, yet one that is not afraid to highlight the faults and foibles of the people it describes, making the story one that resonates as accurate and, most of all, real.

Being an Ironworker for the last 42 years myself, I found this book right on the mark about the lives of working Ironworkers. Mr. Rasenberger has identified the uniqueness of Ironworkers in his book and ties it all together with some very interesting historical events that occurred to the Ironworkers Union. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about real life people, their work and the dangers of that work.